How can cultural spaces become places where people feel they belong?

What role can museums play in a divided world? Who gets to tell our shared stories? And how can cultural spaces become places where people feel they belong?

These were the questions that shaped the Irish Museums Association (IMA)’s 2026 Conference, which took place from Thursday to Saturday March 5-7 at the Peace Campus, Monaghan, in collaboration with Monaghan County Museum. The conference - the largest annual gathering of the Irish museum sector - welcomed over 150 practitioners, researchers and cultural leaders from across the island and overseas. More than 38 contributors explored the theme Shared Futures – Museums as Spaces of Belonging, looking at museums not simply as places that display the past, but as a “third space”: as active civic and cultural spaces where contemporary social issues are discussed and understood.

Over two and a half days, the programme moved from big-picture debates about power, representation and cultural memory to practical examples of collaboration with communities. The programme asked pressing questions about whose stories are told, how inclusion works in practice, and how museums can help people understand and navigate an increasingly polarised world.

Programme highlights

Through talks, panel discussions, workshops, and site visits, the conference examined the changing role of museums in everyday life, from shaping our identity and building public trust to widening access and participation.

International speakers included Dr Sandro Debono (University of Malta); Dr Paulina Florjanowicz, Director of the National Institute for Museums in Poland; Esme Ward, Director of Manchester Museum; and Eike Schmidt, Director of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Italy. Together with contributors from across Ireland - such as Melissa Ndakengerwa (IMMA), Pádraig Naughton (Arts & Disability Ireland), Brenda Malone (National Museum of Ireland), and Iain Greenway from the Dept of Communities (NI) - they discussed how museums can respond to social division and work with communities to create meaningful change. The conference concluded with a site visit to The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, exploring a long-standing creative community as a living example of a civic cultural space in practice.